Trim Brisket Like A Pro

[Music] all right now let's start talking about brisket so this right here is a packer brisket which just means that it has the Lina and the moisten all together all right so it has both parts so again the lead in the moistness the lean end on this side right here you know we call this the flat the moist and we call it the point so certain things that I want to do is as we kind of go through this process I'm gonna be using a lot of words and stuff like that in terms of like what this is what that is I'm cutting off this so just to kind of give you guys terminology of everything of what I'm using you flip down the bottom you have this chunk of fat right here this is what I call and you'll hear up here a lot of people call the heel fat right here that's also part of this like the depth of fat the duffel bags that fat band that kind of runs all the way through the brisket so this is part of the deck oh it's coming all the way through here okay the other part that that I'm going to be mentioning a lot about is kind of use these interchangeably some people call it the mohawk some people call it the hump and that's this chunk of meat right here you'll usually see on top of the moist end of the brisket where there is some exposed meat and that's kind of like that mohawk that hump part that we're talking about and so during those steps when were trying to trim this brisket up I'm gonna be referring to this as the hump or the log all right also one last thing is I really like the fat coverage on top right here as well there there's no scalps there's no like deep cuts and stuff like that so we want to you know preserve that as much as possible all right so what I want to do during this video is to give you guys a 5 steps that I use in order to trim briskets and the same kind of steps that I used to explain to other people that I'm training how to Train brisket what I'm looking for what that what I want them to do so step one is going to be to cut out the heel fat then clean clean the bottom of the brisket to it's going to be to cut down the Mohawk and the hump the reason these shaping the edges step four is going to be shaving down that top fat that even fat on top that we're talking about and then Step five I mean it's not really a step it's kind of like repeating step three and four so as we continuously trim this down we want to make sure that that shape and that fat and everything is where we want it to be so we're gonna I'm gonna keep emphasizing these steps as we do it but yeah let's get started alright so to start I'm gonna I'm gonna use my my curve boning knife and to open up the vacuum-sealed bag we want again like I said we nothing a scalp nothing is is cut out so I want to make sure that I'm not making any big gashes but I'm just trying to open this thing up so one of the things that I'm gonna do is because that first step is to cut out this heal fit anyway I'm just gonna score this heal fat right now you can get a deeper cut without necessarily worrying about you know without digging and tending the meat so just make sure you guys are careful and you're not trying to you know I'm doing this at home right now I don't want any blood to be splattering all over the place so just try to take it out carefully pull all that blood inside the bag and we can toss out the entire thing altogether all right so now that it's all the bag you can kind of see how it's loosened up a little bit now with this heel fat right here some people like to dig it out and some people just kind of like to smooth it out I am the smooth and out type of person you can dig it out and still get a very good product but the only thing is especially if you're starting out cooking with briskets if you dig a hole in there a little bit too deep and you have a little bit of problem controlling your temps and it gets a little bit too hot and it creates just a pocket inside there where there's heat you might risk drying out that little middle part right there so just to be safe and I like to you know I later on I let people do whatever they want but at least just to start we're gonna shave this down so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kind of take this an angle and right here I'm gonna take my knife and put it right here so I can take this entire chunk off I'm not going to spend time shaving this down you know multiple steps I'm gonna it's gonna seem like a lot but I'm gonna take a take out an entire chunk so once I find that I'm gonna put my knife at an angle like this and just run it across just take this whole thing out again this is gonna go in my trim bucket all right now the one thing I like about this right here now is that super smooth that it's not really catching any air there's no like I there's not gonna be an issue with me you know cooking anything over here because again all that was just mostly just fat so it would just sit there wouldn't render and wouldn't do anything now the next thing like we said is we're gonna try to clean up the bottom as much as possible so I would say you know it does take a little bit of practice to kind of get a lot of it off but the biggest trick I would say is to shave with the grain of the muscle if you try to go against the grain you're gonna create a lot of divots in there and that's the one thing we don't want so the grain is going this way right here so I'm gonna make sure my knife is going that way as well the entire time so this fat right here just a little bit thick so I'm going to take off this I'm going to take off this take off some of the feather e fad later on I'm gonna trim this off later anyway so I'm not necessary to worry about that because I'm gonna cut that off but we'll get to that later so let me show you again going across the grain might take off a little meets alright don't worry about it [Music] okay and we're just taking like I'm not worried about taking these like you know I'm not worried about taking these like little feathery pieces off I want to I want to make it smooth so you know it might look like I'm compared to other people I'm taking a lot more fat off the bottom because obviously there is a little bit of meat that's coming off but to me I'd prefer that just because it's really nice and smooth now like you're almost creating a new surface of that brisket without having that excess you know that membrane on top right there okay so you can tell from before you know it's a lot cleaner you can kind of see more of the meat you can definitely see more of the grain this fat right here there's still some left but it is a little bit deeper inside there so I don't want to go inside and dig it out because then like we said we're gonna create that little divot or that crevice inside there that I don't want to I don't want to take out okay so for now to me this is perfect this bottom right here is nice and clean there's not again this this portion right here I'm gonna cut off a little bit a little bit later anyway so I'm just gonna leave that for now alright so that's step one step one was you know is to cut out the heel fat and clean up the bottom so now I'm gonna flip it over now we're gonna work on step two which is cutting down that Mohawk or that hump so again similarly to that heel fat we're gonna try to cut cut out some of this deco fat from here but we got to be very very careful with this all right so we when I'm cutting it down I don't want to keep my knife super so if I'm holding it like that I don't want my knife to be flat like that because then I'm gonna take off this entire portion which would be a mistake I just want to take off enough to where again it's still gonna seem like I'm taking out a lot but I just want to have a clear line of where I'm doing so I'm gonna start off from here and I want my cut to finish around here so kind of where that lean in and that moist then kind of meet which is roughly around this line right here okay so we're gonna take this knife at an angle and we're just gonna shave it down and again I'm finishing off my cut all the way down there okay now this is some good meat down here I mean the marbling looks great but I mean look at how much fat there is that's that's if we don't cut that off you can see a probably about 50% of that is fat right there so later on like if like if I were to go to a restaurant and someone gave me a slice of an is-4 moist brisket and they gave me that slice from all in this end right here man I'll be pissed because they're dirt basically serving me you know half a pound of fat with that again we're still gonna use all this it's still good fat still very good meat over here so we're still gonna save it all right okay now so we took down that hump we took down that mohawk so step three is gonna be shaping around the edges so if you look over here now this right here because I took off that that moist then all we got left is fat a little bit thick layer of fat and that's a lean brisket right here and you can tell this brisket this lean on right here there's not much marbling so to me you know it's not that it's bad and it'll make good chopped brisket but for me I'd prefer to cut this off give my brisket a better shape and just to make sure that it's you know I mean I personally still wouldn't want that slice even after I cut that down because it's not very good so and you can also tell right here on the edges right here after I took down that mohawk we got these little things are sticking out okay so while we're trimming briskets we want to shave down and make everything look super clean and crisp as much as possible so as we shaved on this end I'm gonna start off here and as I work my knife gonna kind of turn it so that I can kind of create a little curve on this side because we don't want anything that's sticking out like that alright so I'm gonna start off right here and again kind of turning my knife a little bit so it's scooping and then scooping underneath that way still good meat again saving that as well all right now we talked about early before how this Lina and right here is super super thin and so we're gonna again it's gonna seem like a lot I'm gonna say this a lot I'm taking off a lot off this brisket but we talked about before the reason why I'm gonna cut this off is it's just fat and really lean brisket this brisket right here this portion is too thin so if I leave it on it's just gonna burn it's just not gonna be very good so we're gonna take it off all together so with that being said I'm kind of creating a line of this is what I like to do a lot up to if I'm really unsure of how I really want to cut it I'll just kind of use my knife and use a tip and knife and kind of score it a little bit to kind of create a imaginary line of where I want to go so I can kind of follow it and you can kind of see the shape of this brisket now that I'm trying to look for I'm just taking off all this excess that is just either gonna be too lean or it's gonna be dry so I'm going to take that line right there we're just gonna go and take this entire thing off okay all right so again it's still very good meat it's just not gonna be good as a whole on a brisket so that's gonna be tossed out right there all right now if we look at this edge right here and this is kind of like what Franklin does as well like he'll cut off the edges so I can see how much is how much that he's got and to me right there that's kind of the purpose perfect thickness of that fat from this side to this side now because I've made all these like really super clean cuts you can tell right here on this fat it's kind of come to a point and I don't really want that so the one thing I'm gonna do is just one last cut is I'm gonna take my knife and just run it across this little corner because I don't want it to catch it I want it to be really smooth so I'm just gonna the other thing I'm doing is I'm putting I'm pushing my knife for these kind of cuts against the cutting board and I'm just I'm just dragging it just so that I can get a nice even cut and that I'm not like scalping anything I'm not like I'm not having super it uneven cuts anywhere and like you know this part was a little bit thicker on this fat so if I just kind of tug it now I can take that off as well so you know we're just every once in a while we're just double checking these briskets I'm pulling on the edges to see if I've missed anything underneath but it looks pretty clean okay and this part right here again I'm super picky so this parts a little sticking out just a tad I'll take that off and we get to go alright sweet now we're gonna work on this side so now we took off the hump no you kind of shape that side step four is gonna be shaving down that top fat so this top fat right here now this is the part I think most people kind of get nervous about because they don't want to scalp the brisket but look I'm gonna let you know this outlook and any restaurant that you go to if we get let's say if we get a hundred briskets there I would say probably at least you know 15 to 20 of them already coming scalp so you scalping a brisket is not gonna ruin the cook I mean obviously if you take down a giant chunk then yeah that's something different but you know while you're scalping it and you know what and I'm saying this too because I haven't earned a brisk in a while so if I happen to be to to scalp it anyway I'm not gonna freak out about it you know we cooked scalp briskets all the time we just want to make sure we get it even as much as possible that I would rather have slightly scalped briskets with the right amount of fat then being scared of scalping and leaving too much fat where you know it just doesn't taste right so we're starting from this and I like to start off on this end right here on that moist end this is kind of typically where there seems to be a lot of fat so doesn't take and you know take your time with this you know we're we're not you know I don't want to completely gash this brisket but I also want to make sure that you know we just don't want to have so much excess fat that it just becomes very unpleasant you know I'd rather have brisket that's cooked really well and have a little bit less fat than having too much fat because the meat itself is already so rich especially on that moist end and we'll fast forward this part just so you guys don't have to watch me turn this entire bracelet [Music] just real quick something like I said earlier when I was taking up this side when I'm taking up the one thing that we don't want to do is as we're trimming it we don't want to like trim a little bit off and then term another section off because then we'll create these grooves in there and then when if we have to meet divots like that when we cook the brisket what's gonna happen is that fat and all that water that's coming out of the brisket doing the cooking process will pull up into those little areas and you'll have bald spots because that the pepper and the salt that should put on the brisket even if you put a binder on there like an oil or mustard it's still gonna pull and wash off all your your rub so again on this side right here again I'm a lefty so if you have a different type of brisket you know you can't do this one but from here I'm putting the tip of my knife on the cutting board [Music] if I'm feeling on top of these on top of this brisket and you know as you get closer and closer down to that fat like it'll start to feel a little more pillowy a little bit softer and so more firm so at this point after I think I'm finished I'm just kind of poking all over the brisket just to make sure that fat feels very similar all the way across so this lean end feels pretty good this part right here feels slightly thicker so I'm going to take down a little bit off here take a little bit off there as well and then that's it in terms of shaving it but now that I'm looking at this brisket and something that I want to do is I kind of want to round out these corners on this on this lean end right here because even though this side right here is very straight and it might you know it might come out to have some really good slices I honestly prefer it to be a little bit rounded just I'll protect the corners of these briskets because and this really has to do you know a lot of you'll hear a lot of people talk about you know the way that you trim the way that you do this and this with that really depends on your smoker that you're cooking on and I haven't cooked on my smoker in my backyard and probably over a year or so so I but the one thing I do know is it tends to cook a little bit hotter and which is the reason why I want to make sure I protect these corners right here and just do that I'm gonna shave these corners down just so that there's nothing sticking out so if you feel a little bit uncomfortable I would say just push out with your hand like that to see how much it stretches out and start from here and just kind of cut off corners at a time like that and as you kind of take up more and more it'll start to take that shape that you wanted to okay so if you're not comfortable with taking one big swoop like that definitely take your time [Music] it doesn't really matter how much or how small these pieces are because you know what later on if you grind this stuff anyway I mean this is kind of shape that you want that's it to me from the shape of the brisket that we started with to me this is a more ideal shape this is a more ideal look on this brisket it's nice and smooth there might be some things I'm gonna cut off like this right here but ultimately we don't have any jagged edges everything is nice and smooth the thickness of that fat is it's great you know we have a little fat right there that's gonna render down nicely I didn't sculpt any fat over here but the fat I know it's slightly thin like you can kind of see it shining through a little bit which is to me I kind of like that just so I know that I'm getting I got close enough without without scalping it mean meaning so later on when they go to slice this brisket when it's done I'll have enough fat it's not going to be overly fatty I'll have enough to kind of cover it protect it during the cook shape on its really good I flip over to the bottom again remember we had a bunch of the excess stuff on here but we ended up cutting it all off anyway so to me well that's it that's a perfectly trimmed brisket to me we'll season this up and then we'll put on the smoker really tomorrow morning that's it guys is it weird that I'm petting this brisket like this you you

Channel: Joe Yim

Views: 250,732

Rating: 4.6546764 out of 5

Keywords: #brisket, #bbq, #barbecue, #briskettrim

Id: ONifvZMlrQk

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2020